The Great Geek Manual

The first law of computer science: Every problem is solved by yet another indirection.

- Footnote in the AT&T Bell Labs paper “Sixteen Ways to Stack a Cat” by Bjarne Stroustrup

The internet is anarchy. It doesn’t have a government, it doesn’t have a head, it doesn’t even have a map. It’s information and connections.

- John Perry Barlow, Rocky Mountain News, December 6, 1994.

1631
The transit of Venus occurs as predicted by Johannes Kepler. He correctly predicted that an ascending node transit of Venus would occur in December 1631, but it passed unobserved in part because his prediction wasn’t sufficiently accurate to predict the exact time it would occur and in part because it occurred after sunset for most of Europe.

1768
The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which will eventually become the oldest continuously published English-language encyclopedia, is published under the title “Encyclopedia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan.” The first edition is published in one hundred installments, which will later be bound into three volumes. Each installment costs sixpence or eight pence for an edition printed on finer paper and is delivered in weekly installments. It will also be published under the pseudonym “A Society of Gentlemen in Scotland,” a title which refers to the many gentlemen who had purchased subscriptions. The three bound volumes will be sold for twelve pounds sterling apiece. The set runs 2,391 pages and includes 160 copperplate illustrations. However, one set of illustrations, a three page depiction of female pelvises and fetuses in the midwifery article will be torn from every copy by order of King George III.

1877
Thomas Edison records his own recitation of “Mary had a Little Lamb” onto a cylinder wrapped with tin foil using his newly completed prototype hand-cranked phonograph at his Menlo Park Laboratory. For all intents and purposes, it is the first recording of a human voice. The word “Halloo” may have been recorded in July on an earlier, paper model derived from his 1876 telegraph repeater, but if such a recording was made, it was destroyed before this recording was made. John Kruesi constructed the phonograph from December 1 – 6, from a sketch Edison made on November 29 (not on August 12 as Edison mistakenly wrote on another sketch in 1917). When Kruesi hears Edison’s first recording later the same day, he exclaims “Gott in Himmel!” (“God in Heaven!”). Edison will be granted a patent for the phonograph on February 19, 1878. (US No. 200,521)
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Art

• Boba Fett Wants You To Read!
• Download your own papercraft Kick-Ass toy.
• Fandomania has a round-up of Aragorn fan art gathered from around Deviant Art.
• Mark Coleran is the Visual Designer responsible for the computer interfaces you see in films. (Video)
• Tor.com has a gallery of Lovecraft art.
• The Toy Zone has posted a chilling gallery of 15 Truly Terrifying Dolls.

Comics

• Comic Alliance reminds you of Five Reasons You Need To Check Out Graphic Novels At Your Local Library.
• GeekDad explains Why You Should Read Comics Aloud to Your Kids.

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1962
The United States performs the last atmospheric nuclear test 69,000 feet over Johnston Island.

1974
Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments presents what had been the world’s first miniature electronic calculator to the Smithsonian Institution for their collection.

1978
The International Business Machines (IBM) Data Processing Division (DPD) division reports the doubling of the information storage capacity of the IBM 3033 processor to sixteen million characters of storage.

1982
According to Twin Galaxies, David Covell scores a record-setting 577,710 points playing the Atari arcade game Space Duel at the Bun ‘n Games arcade in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.

According to Twin Galaxies, Raymond Mueller, age 21, scores a record-setting 4,722,200 points on Atari arcade game Gravitar after playing the game for twelve hours and twenty-one minutes at Chuck E. Cheese in Boulder, Colorado. Visit the official Twin Galaxies website.
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New Moon is very pretty, the acting is as good as could be expected from a teen drama, the soundtrack is fairly decent, and the special effects are convincing. However, they really don’t distract from the fact that the movie has no plot.
Literally nothing happens in the entire movie. This parody is a nearly perfect abridgement.

Art

• Ape Lad has a great collection or creative Twitter icons formed from various popular characters.
• Tor.com is selling Cthulhu Christmas Cards through the Zazzle.com website.

Comics

• Piper comic book to be Adapted into a Film.

Film

• News: Quentin Tarantino Was Offered Green Lantern.
• Cinematical explains everything that you what to know about Everything You Need to Know About Peter Berg’s Battleship.
• Gizmodo has confirmed that R2-D2 made an Appearance in Star Trek.
• Hollywood.com names its choices for the Top 10 Heist Movies.
• io9 explains Why The Road’s Baby Scene Was Cut And Its First Trailer Sucked.
• John Scalzi names his picks for the Ten Worst SciFi Blockbusters of the ’00s.
• Koldcast counts down the 17 Seminal Moments in Sci-Fi Films.
• Mania counts off 9 Cities Hollywood Made Look Like Hell.
• A second official still from the next Harry Potter film has emerged.

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Resources

10 Power Tools for Lifelong Learners – These collections are all free, and can be downloaded to your computers and mp3 players. When you add it all together, you will find thousands of hours of free educational content here from quality sources.

E-Reader Gift Guide – Wired offers up a side-by-side comparison of the various E-Readers on the market.

The Human’s Guide to Running Google Chrome OS – Two weeks ago Google released the source code of their upcoming Chrome OS operating system, and thanks to some fast and hard-working developers, you don’t have to be a coder to try it out.

FreeMyPDF – A website that allows users to remove passwords and restrictions (such as printing, copying text, etc.) from PDFs.

Google Public DNS – a free service that aims to give speed, security and validity for users who choose to use their DNS service.

TweetKlingon.com – It is a good day to tweet! This web service translates your tweets into Klingon, then submits them to Twitter.
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